No 'Tools installation' and no networking. Please help.

[HappyJoe]

Two problems with VMware and Windows 7:

Problem 1.

I am unable to connect to the home network or Internet from Fusion 2.x or, now, 3.x. T%his is a re-run of an older, unanswered post.

I have tried using 'NAT' and 'Bridge'.

The 'Boot Camp partition.vmx' says:

ethernet0.present = "TRUE"

ethernet0.connectionType = "nat"

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"

ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = "FALSE"

ethernet0.linkStatePropagation.enable = "FALSE"

A post here, 'Unable to connect to network in Windows 7 using Boot Camp partition via Fusion 2.0.4' (http://communities.vmware.com/thread/209181;jsessionid=61AD75548E7C0CEE74D8850D75DF7960?tstart=0) included the lines from a .vmx saying:

ethernet0.addressType = "generated"

ethernet0.pciSlotNumber = "33"

ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:31:b3:55"

ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"

Are these missing just because no connection has been made yet, or are they, or other missing ones, needed to connect?

Problem 2. VMware Tools is not installing, it seems. Although the vm has been running for about 2 hours the Virtual Machine menu still says 'Cancel …Tools installation' and no disk noise is audible. Could the lack of network connection, above, be implicated? I have reinstalled in the past.

I need to install this to activate this vm!

Can anyone help with either issue, please?

[WoodyZ]

If VMware Tools does not automatically start the install then go to the CD/DVD drive in Windows Explorer and run the setup.exe manually.

[HappyJoe]

I must apologise: I used the name 'VMware' where I chould have used 'VMware Fusion' more often than just once. I was happy (sort of) to do a re-install but it still left me with no network or Tools installation... How do you know if Tools is actually installing? What signs?

[WoodyZ]

How do you know if Tools is actually installing? What signs?

Generally speaking installing VMware Tools in Windows is no different then installing any other Windows application from CD-ROM. You stick the Disc in and if the installer doesn't start automatically then you have to run setup.exe manually and speaking explicitly and specifically when one selects Virtual Machine > Install VMware Tools what happens is VMware Fusion inserts the appropriate VMware Tools ISO Image into the CD/DVD and in Windows if Auto Insert Notification is not functioning then you need to manually execute the <CD/DVD>:\setup.exe from Windows Explorer.

[HappyJoe]

WoodyZ, I respect your knowledge probably gained over many years, but I don't think that you have spotted that I am talking about installing Tools in a Mac. VMware Fusion is a Mac product. It installs from a single '.dmg' file, no 'setup.exe' is in sight. No 'VMware Tools ISO' is there either. Actually, no CD/DVD is available when any installation is done from a (single) (.dmg) download. It is precisely, as I said, when I manually go 'Virtual Machine > Install VMware Tools' that it fails to do anything after the intial confirmation window - well, for three hours or more anyway. My most recent re-install was after stripping out all files with 'vmware' in the title, as found by the CLI 'find' tool.

Virtualbox worked better than this. I am sticking with Fusion because I paid for it.

[rcardona2k · Accepted solution]

@ WoodyZ is right but there's a misunderstanding. The VMware Tools iso and setup.exe are sourced from VMware Fusion's installation but they run in the context of the Windows virtual machine. If you want to see the windows.iso and it's contents on your Mac, use the Finder's Go > Go to Folder... menu option and enter "/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/isoimages", double-click on windows.iso and when the Finder opens that folder, view by list and you'll see setup.exe.

VMware Fusion's Virtual Machine > Install VMware Tools option, temporarily attaches windows.iso as a virtual CD/DVD drive in the virtual machine and on Windows usually this shows up as the D:\ drive. Windows autorun is supposed to automatically start "setup.exe". When this doesn't happen, you can usually use Windows Explorer to navigate directly to the D:\ drive, open it and double-click on setup.exe to manually kickstart the process.

[HappyJoe]

Many thanks for making this matter so clear to me. 'Tools' are now up and running - I had to copy them to my Bootcamp partition to run them as the networking is non-working. Probably the original problem...

[HappyJoe]

It's been a while since I last responded to this posting as I'm losing faith in Fusion - or how it responds to my iMac.  However, Tools installation went fine after I uninstalled and stripped out all Fusion-related files and did another reinstall of v3.  This time it happened automatically on first VM-ing.

STILL NO NETWORK capability!  As before, 'bridged' and 'NAT' do nothing.  Only get 'Media disconnected' in ipconfig.

What can I do now?